Valencia 1 - Las Fallas

Have you ever seen an 8 year old smoking, then light a blackcat firecracker and throw it at you?! Only in Spain, and it´s called Las Fallas! I went to Valencia to see las fallas, this fiesta where people basically light their entire city on fire. For an ENTIRE YEAR they make elaborate painted paper-mache figures that are taller than buildings , and then in one night, grab some fireworks and some matches and set them all on fire!! Que GUAY! A pyromaniac´s dream, verdad! So we left at 5am on Friday morning to Valencia by bus with a tour guide who would not stop talking from five IN THE MORNING until about 1 pm! She was SOOOO PESADA, I just wantedto hit her! She would junior-high-school OVEREXAGGERATE her words like, oh I am SUPER-emocianante....and grande-grande-grande...and super- super-pequenin. How would you feel if someone was SUPER-emocianante at 5am? Then, as if her talking wasnt enough, she decided that at 8am, when people were still trying to sleep, to put on a movie, on FULL BLAST! The altavoz could not be any louder, and in fact, it was SO loud she broke it, so after the movie was over, when she would talk, the speakers would go on and off. Ok, imagine your car speakers doing this, then imagine this happening on a loudspeker for hours on a bus that you can't escape! All the way over there, she talked about La Crema de Las Fallas (which is the biggest and best Falla) which was supposed to happen at 12 am (translation: 1 in Spanish time). She repeated it about 10 times. When she spoke, she put the microphone directly on her lips, so that everything was muffled. So when we didnt understand, it wasnt because we didnt know the language, it was because she didnt know how to use a microphone. I endured this lady for a good 8 hours until we arrived in Valencia. THEN they didnt let us go to the hotel to freshen up and drop off our bags, NO! We had to carry our bags with us from 1 pm til 1:30 am in the madrugada! That is insane, about 10 hours of carrying bags! Apparently our hotel was an hour away and she didnt want to go all the way over there because she said that we would miss everything if we did. WRONG! There was nothing to do until about 10pm, except eat!